I am equally flattered and thrilled to receive the One Lovely Blog Award from Gabriel and Christal over at Gabriel I Photography.

I LOVE their blog. Their world travels are documented by their incredible photography. I was particularly inspired by their Yellow January post recently. I mean, look at the color of those flowers!

When you’re the lucky recipient of the One Lovely Blog Award, you must do 3 things:

Thank the person who nominated you. (Obvi.)

Tell the whole wide world 7 things about yourself.

Nominate 15 bloggers you feel have one of the loveliest, most wonderfullest (new word) blogs on the entire interwebs (more new words).

Since I just created my permanent About The Designer page (even better, the new Scientist and Fur-Baby pages) I thought I might break the rules and do something a bit different. After all, I am a blogger and that’s my prerogative.

One of my very favorite blogs is Sunrise Ruby (which is the first of my nominees for the award). Sarah is a traveler in search of meaning in her life and, in my opinion, has many important and beautiful things to say. (If you don’t follow her blog already then you certainly should.) Recently she posted about fear and was brave enough to put some of hers out there for the world to see. In fact, I was so moved by it that I am going to share 7 things that scare me, rather than the required 7 bits of trivia.

My Biggest Fears

{Failure} In fact, I’ve been so paralyzed by the fear of failure throughout my life that it has prevented me from trying to do many things I wish I had done.

{Hot Air Balloons} You’re dangling in a tiny basket from a fabric tarp filled with fire a million miles in the air. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea.

{Being Boring} I always worry that if I’m not entertaining that no one will like me. This also prevents me from meeting new people.

{Needles} I believe this is both normal and self-explanatory.

{Regret} This is possibly the worst one because it prevents me from making decisions. ALL decisions. I fear I will regret virtually every decision I make, which means making even seemingly small decisions causes me great anxiety.

{Birds} I have been the unfortunate victim of a fly-by pooping not once, not twice, but THRICE, my dear friends. Weirdly, two of those incidents occurred in Paris, though not on the same trip. Whenever a wild bird comes near me I panic.

{Loss} My deepest, darkest, most haunting fear is that I will lose those most important to me. I have regular nightmares revolving around this theme. If I lost The Scientist a piece of me would be lost forever, and the thought of never being a whole person is enough to make me stop getting out of bed.

And here is a photo of me the first time I was ever scared:

Now that we’ve established I’m a tortured soul we can move on to the best part: Meeting fabulous bloggers! I will try not to repeat any of the same blogs I’ve introduced you to recently so you don’t get bored with me (fear #4). Also, I’ve tried to pick blogs that don’t seem to have received this award before. If you have and I accidentally nominate you anyway, please excuse me for thinking you’re awesome.

{LostNChina} This. Girl. Is. HILARIOUS. I mean, seriously funny. If you are having a bad day and need a good laugh, go check her out.

{Elizabeth and Liz} All Mad Men, all the time. You don’t need a better reason to look at this.

{Ballard to Brooklyn} Two besties living on opposite coasts; One in Seattle, one in NYC. This is how they keep up and, if you know anything about me, you know that these 2 cities are the only 2 that would be acceptable for me to die in.

{Bunny and Porkbelly} Bunny eats delicious foodz and then shows you the photos. Even better that half the time she’s eating in and reviewing places in the DC area. Awesome.

{Martha’s So-Called Life} Martha is a regular gal in an irregular place: Alaska. She has an adorable dog and a super cute little Etsy shop. Her everyday life stories are charming and fun to read when you want to daydream about living among the moose.

{Jen Ten Designs} An American girl living in Sicily. Her dog is cute and her style is better. Reading her posts makes me wish I still lived in Rome!

{Work Play Polish} Ok, guilty pleasure. I never thought I would read a blog about painting your nails but, here I am. And I love it. Please to enjoy.

{Victoria Elizabeth Barnes} She’s navigating the renovation of her home with humor woven into each story. What’s not to love about that?

{Bliss} A little bit of DIY, a little bit of fashion, a little bit of family. Love.

I know it says to nominate 15 but if I share any more with you then I won’t have any to show you later! Please don’t hate me (fear #3).

I love this post. Usually the “acceptance speeches” are uninteresting, but you somehow transcended that.

Making decisions paralyzes me too. Big decisions are nearly impossible… and require boring everyone close to me with the extreme tedium of infinite detail and waffling back and forth. Which is sometimes its own decision—freeze until it’s too late.

I will check out all your nominees. But I’m starting with the MadMen one… I have no idea why I never thought to search for a blog devoted to my favorite alternate universe…

HA! This made me LOLZ! I’m so glad you like my scared baby face. My scared adult face is probably less entertaining and more unfortunate. I’m so happy you love my blog because I think you’re a genius! :D